Part 1 (1/2)

The Elusive Pimpernel

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Chapter I: Paris: 1793

There was not even a reaction

On! ever on! in that wild, surging torrent; sowing the wind of anarchy, of terroris a hurricane of destruction and of horror

On! ever on! France, with Paris and all her children still rushes blindly, land, Spain, Prussia, all joined together to stee,-defies the Universe and defies God!

Paris this September 1793!-or shall we call it Vendemiaire, Year I of the Republic?-call it ill! Paris! a city of bloodshed, of huigantic self-devouring round, Toulon, Marseilles, masses of blackened ruins, her bravest sons turned to lustful brutes or to abject cowards seeking safety at the cost of any huhty, holy Revolution! apotheosis of equality and fraternity! grand rival of decadent Christianity

Five weeks now since Marat, the bloodthirsty Friend of the People, succuin patriot, a month since his uillotine! There has been no reaction-only a great sigh! Not of content or satisfied lust, but a sigh such as the -coveted blood

A sigh for raded and abased, awaiting death, which lingers on the threshold of her infaht hundred scions of ancient houses that have enerals, Custine, Blanchelande, Houchard, Beauharnais; worthy patriots, noble-hearted wouided enthusiasts, all by the score and by the hundred, up the feooden steps which lead to the guillotine

An achieveh for more!

But for the hty self, and thought things over!

The h licked his powerful jaws and pondered!

So wonderful!

We have had a new Constitution, a new Justice, nes, a new Almanack!

What next?

Why, obviously!-How coht of such a wonderful thing before?

A new religion!

Christianity is old and obsolete, priests are aristocrats, wealthy oppressors of the People, the Church but another form of wanton tyranny

Let us by allhas been done to destroy the old! To destroy! always to destroy! Churches have been ransacked, altars spoliated, tombs desecrated, priests and curates h

There ion; and to attain that there must be a new God

”Man is a born idol-worshi+pper”

Very well then! let the People have a new religion and a new God

Stay!-Not a God this ti in fact which the ht to destroy

Not a God, but a Goddess

A Goddess! an idol! a toy! since even the er ion, and a new toy, and grave men, ardent patriots, mad enthusiasts, sat in the assembly of the Convention and seriously discussed the s which she asked for

Chaumette, I think it ho first solved the difficulty:-Procureur Chaumette, head of the Paris Municipality, he who had ordered that the cart which bore the dethroned queen to the squalid prison of the Conciergerie should be led slowly past her own late palace of the Tuileries, and should be stopped there just long enough for her to see and to feel in one grand mental vision all that she had been when she dwelt there, and all that she noas by the will of the People

Chaumette, as you see, was refined, artistic;-the torture of the fallen Queen's heart uillotine on her neck

No wonder, therefore, that it was Procureur Chauion Paris wanted just now

”Let us have a Goddess of Reason,” he said, ”typified if you will by the most beautiful woman in Paris Let us have a feast of the Goddess of Reason, let there be a pyre of all the gehich for centuries have been flaunted by overbearing priests before the eyes of starving multitudes, let the People rejoice and dance around that funeral pile, and above it all let the new Goddess tower s and triumphant The Goddess of Reason! the only deity our new and regenerate France shall acknowledge throughout the centuries which are to coreeted the impassioned speech

”A new Goddess, by all entlemen of the National asseer that the People should have this toy; so to play with and to tease, round which to dance the”Ca ira”

So to distract the minds of the populace from the consequences of its own deeds, and the helplessness of its legislators

Procureur Chauinal idea; like a true artist who sees the broad effect of a picture at a glance and then fills in thehis sche Reason can only go hand in hand with the riper age of second youth she estive she ed and painted for she is a mere idol easily to be appeased with incense,deeply interested in his subject, seeking minutiae of detail, hich to render his theme more and more attractive

But patience was never the characteristic of the Revolutionary Government of France The National assembly soon tired of Chaumette's dithyra like a gigantic leopard

Soon Henriot was on his feet He had a far finer scheues A grand National fete, seion which destroyed and desecrated and never knelt in worshi+p

Citizen Chaumette's Goddess of Reason by all ood one-but the Goddess ure-head: around her a procession of unfrocked and apostate priests, typifying the destruction of ancient hierarchy,loads of sacred vessels, the spoils of ten thousand churches of France, and ballet girls in bacchanalian robes, dancing the Carnole around the new deity

Public Prosecutor Foucquier Tinville thought all these schemes very tame Why should the People of France be led to think that the era of a new religion would eants and of fireworks? Let every man, woain of blood

”Oh!” he exclaimed in passionate accents, ”would that all the traitors in France had but one head, that it uillotine!”

He approved of the National fete, but he desired an apotheosis of the guillotine; he undertook to find ten thousand traitors to be beheaded on one grand and glorious day: ten thousand heads to adorn the Place de la Revolution on a great, never-to-be-forgotten evening, after the guillotine had accomplished this record work

But Collot d'Herbois would also have his say Collot lately hailed from the South, with a reputation for ferocity unparalleled throughout the whole of this horrible decade He would not be outdone by Tinville's bloodthirsty schemes

He was the inventor of the ”Noyades,” which had been so successful at Lyons and Marseilles ”Why not give the inhabitants of Paris one of these exhilarating spectacles?” he asked with a coarse, brutal laugh